11 Actually Helpful Lies The Best Parents Tell Their Kids
Pixpan_creative | Shutterstock Kids rely on their parents to make sense of the world, which often feels chaotic and scary. They look to their trusted adults to feel safe. In order to do this, good parents often tell some helpful, age appropriate lies to their kids.
Great parents wish they could say that the good guys always win, but they know it's not the truth. Instead, they say what they can stand by in order to give their kids security, even if it's a bit of a stretch of the truth.
11 actually helpful lies the best parents tell their kids
1. ‘You can be anything you want.’
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One of the most helpful lies parents tell their kids is that they can make any dream come true. No matter how silly or extreme, the best parents say, "You got it!"
When you decided to be an astronaut after learning about outer space in second grade, your parents said you could do anything. They could have crushed your little kid's heart by telling you that only 676 people in the world have gone into space, but instead, they let you believe you could fly to the stars. When you declared your intention to become the prima ballerina in the Royal Ballet, your parents took your dream seriously. They enrolled you in lessons, invested in tutus and shoes, and gave you a standing ovation at every performance.
It might be a deceptive thing to say, but it serves a noble purpose. This particular lie is meant to inspire hope. It encourages kids to embrace the world instead of counting themselves out. Even better? It might not be a lie! After all, every professional athlete was once a kid whose parents believed in them, right?
2. ‘You must eat all your vegetables to grow big and strong.’
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Honesty is the best policy, but parents twist the truth more often than their kids realize. If you believed your parents when they said eating every vegetable on your plate was the only way to get bigger, at least when you were really little, you probably had pretty good parents.
Getting through dinner with young kids can be a battle of wills. It doesn’t matter what their parents make; kids will decide it’s “so yucky,” gag dramatically, and refuse to let a single green bean pass their lips. With the intensity of their youthful defiance, it’s no wonder parents massage the truth to make meals less stressful.
If there’s one thing kids hate more than broccoli, it’s being told how little they are, which is why this lie is so effective. Insisting that leafy greens are the secret to getting taller might not be the most honest approach, but it’s not the worst lie a parent could tell.
Of course, this varies by age. Nutrition is a complex topic for little kids, but they should learn more little details as they grow so they don't believe a childish version of the truth about food into their teens. Still, battles over food will likely continue, and there are age-appropriate solutions for all kids.
3. ‘Magic like the tooth fairy is real'
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Most of the time, lying to kids isn't great, but there are parenting situations where dishonesty can be the best policy. If your parents lied and said the tooth fairy was real, they were far from alone. Most families have some "magic" they teach their kids and go along with for at least a few years during young childhood.
According to Robyn Koslowitz Ph.D., parents must consider the type of lie they’re telling, because not all lies are created equal. For example, they might say their kids’ hair will fall out if they don’t brush it, an instrumental lie meant to manage their children's behavior.
Instrumental lies lead children to do what their parents want, but short-term compliance might not be worth the negative consequences. Since this type of lie only benefits parents, instrumental lies can be damaging.
In conrtrast, mood and myth-based lies enhance the childhood experience. Cultural lies are a form of storytelling. They help kids make sense of big moments, like losing their first tooth.
“By allowing a child to enter a world of fantasy and metaphor, the parent is enriching the child’s imagination,” Koslowitz explains.
4. ‘You’re truly brilliant!"
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If you believed your parents when they said you were brilliant or a genius, they did a great job raising you. By praising you for being smart, your parents emphasized the importance of committing to your education and problem-solving. Their encouragement lifted you when you felt low and helped you see your ability.
That doesn't mean these parents let their kids coast. Instead, the help them see their potential.
According to psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy, facing challenges and sitting in their frustration is the only way for kids to build resilience. She described that experience as being in “The Learning Space,” which is “the space between not-knowing and knowing [that] generally brings one feeling: Frustration.”
“Resilience doesn’t come from getting to ‘knowing’ as quickly as possible,” she explains. “Resilience comes from the length of time you can tolerate The Learning Space.”
Parents exaggerate when they say their kids are brilliant or genius, but it's true in many ways. Even if they don't rank high on the IQ charts, intelligence exists on a spectrum and in all sorts of forms. So why it may be a literal lie, it's one made from an honest place.
5. If you work hard, your dreams will come true
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The best parents raise their kids to believe that putting in hard work will make their dreams come true. Reality is way more nuanced than that, of course, but this is one little white lie that can help kids find their way to big dreams.
Working hard doesn’t guarantee success. Not every dream is attainable, and people aren’t always rewarded for their dedication. But almost nobody achieves their dreams without a lot of hard work. More hard work than they could've imagined.
Staying flexible and learning to pivot are essential to success, even though your definition of success might have to change, too. The more you can navigate disappointment with grace, the more you’ll learn how strong you are.
And that's the real hard work that gets you to success, even if it doesn't look exactly how you expected. But it's the helpful lie parents tell that gets their kids there.
6. ‘Being a kid is the best time of your life.’
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Any kid that believes their parents when they say, "Being a kid is the best time of your life" had a pretty fantastic childhood. These parents do more than meet your basic needs; they make childhood an adventure.
When you have great parents like this, you have family movie nights and epic birthday parties. They let you play outside until the sun goes down, and they don’t care if you come home covered in mud. They want their kids to have fun.
Is childhood the best time of a person's life? Probably not. It's full of new and scary experiences and very little control over your life. But the best parents give their kids a sense of control, even if it's just by having fun.
7. ‘You're so talented, your art belongs in a museum.’
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When parents believe their kids are inherently worthy, they help their kids believe it, too. Their love lifts their kids, paving the way for them to become confident, self-assured adults.
If you had one of these parents, they said your science fair experiment was groundbreaking. They told you every piece of art you made belonged in a museum, and you believed them. Your macaroni necklaces were high fashion. Your self-portraits were astonishingly accurate. They ooh-ed and ahh-ed over every fingerpaint masterpiece you brought home.
Once you got older and realized your artwork was nowhere near museum-worthy, you may have felt a twinge of disappointment, but mostly, you remembered how deeply your parents loved you. That's what makes this lie one of the best one parents can tell their kids.
8. ‘I love watching your recitals.’
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The best parents tell little white lies to spare their kids' feelings. For instance, every holiday and spring recital parents suffer through will be praised up and down.
When you have parents like this, you never doubt that your parents would be there for you. They are a reliable presence throughout your life. While they didn’t make false promises, they give you false praise, which wasn’t as traumatizing as it sounds.
According to a study from the Journal of Moral Education, parenting by lying is a common practice with the potential to cause harm. Still, as with everything else in life, context matters most. The researchers acknowledged that “different types of lies may have different implications for trust.”
When your parents said they loved your recitals, they told an affiliative lie: "to protect a child’s feelings [and] promote social harmony.” Lying caused you less pain than telling the truth would have. Your parents lied because they loved you, which means they did a great job raising you.
9. ‘Mistakes mean success is right around the corner.’
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If you believed that every mistake you made brought you one step closer to success, your parents raised you with a growth mindset, and that is a real gift. Growth mindset has been shown to help kids be better problem-solvers and overall more resilient.
This statement isn’t so much an outright lie as it is a murky half-truth. After all, making mistakes can help us learn and grow, but they don’t automatically guarantee success.
Your parents told this lie to help you understand that mistakes hold promise. They wanted to teach you that failing doesn’t make you a failure. And this is all the truth. But it doesn't always mean success is coming soon. Often it means you're one step closer to a totally different type of success you weren't expecting.
While they weren’t being entirely truthful, they were trying to give you hope and encourage you to keep going, which indicates solid parenting.
10. ‘We’re not worried about money.’
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When parents lie, it makes their kids less likely to trust them later in life. But sometimes, an age-appropriate lie is necessary to help kids feel safe. Some subjects are too heavy for kids to handle, so parents can find a way to ease their kids' worry without truly betraying them.
Some parents lied to avoid conflicts with their kids, saying they couldn’t afford things they could. Other parents downplayed their financial struggles, telling their kids that they weren’t worried about money when they were. While not all financial lies are equally harmless, parents generally are trying to protect their kids from adult worries when they lie about money
11. 'I love all my kids equally and don't have a favorite.'
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This is the most controversial item on the list, but well worth a moment of our time. While the best parents really do love all their kids equally, there are times when it doesn't feel that way.
Yes, you always love your kids more than you can say when you're a parent, but you may have one that you feel especially close with and one who feels very distant. This often changes throughout their lives, and that is natural.
So, when parents say they love all their kids equally, that's not necessarily a lie, but it's not the exact truth, either. Love is different between parent and child and that love changes, and great parents know to be aware of their biases (for example, more parents name their daughters as a favorite over sons) so they will treat them equally. But their love for each child is different and takes different forms.
The best parents have unconditional love for all their kids, regardless of what they say or do, but they may feel a little more loving toward one than the other from time-to-time. They just know better than to say that out loud. And that's when this little lie is very helpful!
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
